It’s a bit of a winter wonderland on Dublin’s Northside this morning, which makes it the first time that any of our kids have seen a proper fall of snow in their own back garden.  Had it been like this yesterday, then I doubt if even I’d’ve been insane enough to cross the country for the match.

There’s plenty in the papers about yesterday’s game, such as this report from RTÉ, this one in the Irish Times from Keith Duggan (when he’s reincarnated, Keith might, if he’s lucky, get to cover Kerry’s games) and this one in the Indo.  The latter report contains a few post-match quotes from Johnno, which, I confess, sounded a bit lame to me.  Here’s what El Jefe had to say:

“It is disappointing to lose the game. I thought when we got level after they got the goal that we could have kicked on from there. Maybe in the first half we had a number of chances that we didn’t utilise as much as we can. A lot of new players and young players got their opening chance in a Mayo jersey today. There are certain positives and that is what we have to look at going forward”.

Elsewhere, there’s some excellent analysis (mainly from the Mayo lads) going on over at the match thread on gaaboard.com and, no doubt, my fellow Mayo GAA blogger will provide his take on the action shortly as well.

Our Mini-League also swung into action yesterday and for some of us, the opening day round proved a bit of a chastening experience, with your humble correspondent currently languishing in 23rd place (there’s 29 of us taking part by the way).   MickC is the early pace-setter but he’s being closely marked by SixPointsUp, who is just a point behind in second.  There’s a gap then to maigheo in third and I see that nooneshoutedstop is nicely tucked in there in fourth, with An Spailpin showing good early form too at seventh.

I took a bit of a gamble on Division 1 and it backfired fairly spectacularly on me, what with ourselves, Donegal and Dublin all losing.  With time up at Croker, I was dancing round the living room (I had the Dubs to win by a point) but then Sean Cavanagh – who should have been in the dressing room by then, had that bollix of a ref, Marty Duffy, been applying the new rules correctly – intervened to decisive effect.  So, like our lads, I’m near the foot of the table looking up but, as Johnno says, there are certain positives to be taken from the experience and that’s what I have to look at going forward …